Charisms, the Laos, and Listening 

Deacon Douglas McManaman 

“I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.”

This is such an important line of Scripture, for what it reveals is that the prophecy in the Book of Joel has come to fulfillment: 

And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even upon your male and female servants, in those days, I will pour out my spirit (Jl 3, 1-2).

In other words, the separation between the religious and educated elite on the one hand and the common people without that formal training in the Torah on the other will be obliterated. And it has been, with the coming of Christ. God reveals himself to “minors” (Gk: nepiois). In other words, the humble and unpretentious—but he hides himself from the learned and the sophisticated. And of course this theme is repeated throughout the New Testament: Jesus has table fellowship with hated tax collectors, sinners, and other outcasts, etc. The term “sinners” generally refers to those who do not observe the Torah, and the reason is they don’t know the Torah, for they cannot study the Torah because of the demands of their daily labor. And yet they recognized Christ, while the religious elite, the highly educated Pharisees and Scribes, did not have the eyes to recognize him. Paul continues this theme in his letter to the Corinthians: 

Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. (1 Co 1, 27-28)

How does this work? There are seven personal gifts of the Holy Spirit and a larger number of charisms. The charisms are given for the building up of the body of Christ while the personal gifts are for one’s own personal holiness: wisdom, knowledge, understanding, piety, counsel, fortitude, and the fear of the Lord. But each of us has also received at baptism either one or more  charisms that have been given in view of our specific vocation. A charism is a specific way the Holy Spirit manifests through you, for the sake of others, and you may not even be aware when or whether that is actually happening. St. Paul provides a non-exhaustive list of a number of charisms: the gift of healing, the gift of miracles, the gift of prophecy, words of knowledge, etc.,. (1 Co 12, 27-31; Rom 12, 1ff). But Paul also includes some less spectacular charisms, such as the charism of teaching and administration (1Co 12, 28). I try to get this across to my students who are studying to be teachers: “You have a charism”, I tell them, “but like any gift, you have to unwrap and open it”. A charism is not the same as a highly charged personality (charisma)–students often confuse the two. As an example of a teaching charism, consider a former colleague of mine who was technologically challenged, computer illiterate, could barely formulate an email when I first met him and used an overhead projector till the end of his career. Nevertheless, he was the most influential teacher that I knew in my 32 ½ years of teaching. The students were drawn to him, they listened to him, even the most rebellious. He loved his students, prayed for them every morning, loved his subject matter and continued to study it, and he was a joyful teacher. He was an enigma to many in the education system, because he never adopted the latest trends in education, yet the line up of parents eager to meet and thank him on parent/teacher interview night was always the longest. 

I have worked with many gifted administrators over the years, and one in particular had a tremendous charism of administrative leadership. She had great faith and a deep prayer life, and she had kavod, a Hebrew word that is typically translated as glory but really means weight–not literally as in poundage, but a kind of authority, a gravitas. Students respected her, and they knew she loved them, even when she was disciplining them.  

But every baptized person has specific charisms that have to be gradually opened. I’m always impressed with our parishioners at our parish bible study; although they’ve never formally studied theology, the ones in my small group exhibit insight and wisdom that is often remarkable. I know truck drivers and laborers who have no post secondary degrees, but who say the wisest things, revealing again deep insight into the things of God. Where do they get such wisdom and insight? The Holy Spirit comes to their aid. And what is particularly interesting is that they don’t realize that what they say is often deeply insightful–they always second guess themselves. But there’s the humility, and God reveals himself to the humble, to mere children who don’t have any pretensions to great knowledge. 

Because of that very wide outpouring of the Holy Spirit, there are very specific charisms tailored to the vocation that God calls you to, and so they won’t appear in the letters of Paul. Whether you are a police officer, a school janitor, or an accountant, you are given the charism by which the Holy Spirit will manifest himself through you in a way that builds up the body of Christ. And so, there is a big difference between a nurse who has a nursing charism and one who does not. Those with a charism exude a supernatural compassion, intelligence, meticulousness, and a sense that they genuinely care about their patients, making them feel as if they matter. There’s a significant difference between a court judge with a judicial charism and one without. They will exude a degree of practical wisdom, intuition, and integrity, as did someone like St. Thomas More–everyone knew that More was different from the rest. If you are a gifted entrepreneur, God wants to elevate that gift so that you will become one who creatively moves this world forward, without perpetuating the oppression of the weak, but reversing that trend. 

With a charism tailored to your natural talents, you will acquire the wisdom to see the world from a very specific angle, and so you will come to understand the faith from that angle, and the result is that you will have insights that I will lack, because I lack that experience and that specific angle. That is why both Francis and Leo place great emphasis on synodality, that is, listening to the faithful, having synods that include women, lay people, non-clerics, in which bishops are given very specific instructions not to interrupt, but to listen attentively. To do so is to listen to the Church.[1] In her brilliant work on the power of listening, Nancy Kline writes: “Beneath the fear of being punished for thinking for themselves, most people have ideas that matter, ideas that would make a difference if they could be developed fully. People, regardless of their position or status, can think of things that move discussions to whole new levels of sparkle and resolution. Individuals you would never suspect of being interesting have absorbing stories to tell and disturbing insights that would humble even the most long-winded of us right out of our self-importance and rush. If the conditions are right, the huge intelligence of the human being surfaces. Ideas seem to come from nowhere and sometimes stun us.”[2]

One of the interesting things about Vatican II is that the first draft of the Preparatory document for Lumen gentium (entitled Schema de Ecclesia) was overwhelmingly rejected by the Council Fathers and sent back to be re-written. It was rejected for its clericalism and a top down hierarchical view of the Church. In other words, it presented the Church as primarily a juridical bureaucracy and treated lay Catholics merely as passive subjects. If we look at the final document of Lumen gentium, however, we notice the emphasis on the Church as the People of God, the laos (Gk: the common people), which appears before the treatment of that part of the Church that is the hierarchy (Ch. 3). That was a monumental shift in emphasis at the time. The Church is not primarily the society of the ordained; rather, it is a charismatic body, as Cardinal Suenens pointed out. He writes: 

…the Holy Spirit is not given to pastors only but to each and every Christian. …In baptism, the sacrament of faith, all Christians receive the Holy Spirit. All Christians, “living stones”, as they are called, are to be built into a “spiritual dwelling”. Therefore the whole Church is essentially a truly “pneumatic” or spiritual reality, built on the foundation not only of the Apostles, but–as Ephesians 2, 20 says –also of prophets. In the Church of the New Testament God “gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some pastors and teachers” (Eph 4, 11; see 3, 5).

The Holy Spirit shows himself in the Church in the great number and richness of his spiritual gifts, gifts which Scripture calls pneumatika or charisms. Certainly in the time of St. Paul even very extraordinary and marvelous charisms such as “ecstatic utterance” or charisms of healings were shown forth in the Church. But we should not think that the charisms of the Spirit consist exclusively or even principally in these phenomena which are more extraordinary and marvelous. St. Paul speaks, for example, of the charism of wise speech and knowledge, of the charism of faith, or the charism of teaching (Rom 12, 7; 1 Cor 12, 28ff, 14, 26), of comforting speech, and administration, of the charism of distinguishing true spirits from false, of the charism of helping others and guiding them and so on. 

Thus to St. Paul the Church of the living Christ does not appear as some kind of administrative organization, but as a living web of gifts, of charisms, or ministries. The Spirit is given to every individual Christian, the Spirit who gives his gifts, his charisms to each and every one “different as they are allotted to us by God’s grace” (Rom 12, 6). … Each and every Christian, whether lettered or unlettered, has his charism in his daily life, but–as St. Paul says – “All of these must aim at one thing; to build up the Church” (1 Cor 14, 26, see 14, 3-5).  … A statement about the Church, then, which would speak only of the Apostles and their successors and fail to speak about prophets and teachers would be defective in a matter of the highest importance.”[3] 

The fundamental problem, I believe, is that many people are afraid of discovering their gifts and charisms. It is easier to engage in hero worship, to project our own inner gold outward onto others. It can be frightening to think that God pays that much attention to me, calls me, and has gifted me for a mission. That this is normal, we need only recall Moses’ initial resistance to God’s call (Cf. Exodus, chapters 3 & 4), or that of Jonah, Jeremiah, or Gideon. They all saw themselves as inadequate, small and weak, unfit for the task, but this is precisely why God chose to use them as his instruments. They didn’t have large egos, which can get in the way and stifle the work of the Holy Spirit. We are afraid that if I give God my finger, he will take my entire hand. And that’s true, God will take the hand and much more besides, but the good that will be accomplished through us will be incalculable and our joy will be complete.

Notes

1. Michael Higgins writes: “Francis defined a synodal church in his address on the 50th anniversary of the Synod of Bishops in 2015—quite early in his papacy—as a church “which listens, which realizes that listening ‘is simply more than hearing.’ It is a mutual listening in which everyone has something to learn. The faithful people, the college of bishops, the Bishop of Rome: all listening to each other, and all listening to the Holy Spirit, the ‘Spirit of truth’ (Jn 14:17), in order to know what he ‘says to the Churches’ (Rev2:7)…. In his 2020 encyclical Fratelli tutti he invoked the image of the polyhedron to represent “a society where differences coexist, complementing and reciprocally enriching one another, even amid disagreements and reservations. Each of us can learn something from the others.” The synodal church as a polyhedron is a church more reminiscent of the pre-Constantinian era, a time of institutional humility and simplicity, shorn of the accoutrements of power, disengaged from political ideologies, with no ties to either the ancien regime or the ascendant orthodoxies of the current era. In fact, Francis welcomed a change of era, a cambio de epoca, as he called it, with all that it portends: its uncertainties, its possibilities, its unpredictable eruptions of the Holy Spirit.” Pontifex Minimus: Pope Francis Institute talk—June 26, 2026 (part 2), https://mailchi.mp/b506f9ca07d2/pontifex-minimus-the-popes-visit-highlights-his-gift-for-meaningful-engagement-12849577?e=dd69433d0a

2. Nancy Kline. Time to Think: Listening to Ignite the Human Mind (pp. 36-37). (Function). Kindle Edition. She also writes: “Attention, the act of listening with palatable respect and fascination, is the key to a Thinking Environment. Listening of this calibre is enzymatic. When you are listening to someone, much of the quality of what you are hearing is your effect on them. Giving good attention to people makes them more intelligent. Poor attention makes them stumble over their words and seem stupid. Your attention, your listening is that important. We think we listen, but we don’t. We finish each other’s sentences, we interrupt each other, we moan together, we fill in the pauses with our own stories, we look at our watches, we sigh, frown, tap our finger, read the newspaper, or walk away. We give advice, give advice, give advice. Even professional listeners listen poorly much of the time. They come in too soon with their own ideas. They equate talking with looking professional. …Listening to each other, if you want to think for yourselves, requires discipline and the most profound attention for each other. Ibid., p. 37-38. 

3. Cardinal Leon Suenens. “The Charismatic Dimension of the Church”. Council Speeches of Vatican II, edited by Hans Kung, Yvest Congar, Daniel O’Hanlon. Paulist Press, New York: 1964, p. 29-32.